Last week’s posts all address the difficult issue of the relationship between public appearance and private beliefs and actions.

Mormons, Muslims, Atheists, Gays and Lesbians are unlikely to become President, Michael Corey reports. Large percentages of Americans would be unlikely to vote for these minorities for the highest office in the land according to a recent Gallop poll. This contrasts with other groups that have historically been objects of intolerance. Only small percentages of the population reveal an unwillingness to vote for a Hispanic, Jew, Baptist, Catholics, woman or African American. Given the definitive role that racism has played in American history, it is striking that of these historically excluded groups, the least amount of prejudice is directed toward African Americans. This represents significant progress. That Mormons, Muslims, Atheists, gays and lesbians don’t fare so well shows that progress is a slow and uneven process. To be sure, even in the case of African Americans and women, the taboo against the expression of prejudice may depress the numbers, as Felipe and Andrew maintained in their replies. There is private prejudice, public denial.

Corey proposes two special reasons for the persistence of prejudice against Mormons, true belief, i.e. ideological certainty, and “know-nothingism,” i.e.  intentional ignorance. Michael Weinman explores how these are produced and reproduced in Israel, not only as a matter of official public policy, but more significantly in the naming of a picture book character, Elmer the Patchwork Elephant. The project of official policy to Hebraize the names in East Jerusalem is transparent. Every day practices and expectations about in group and out group relations are more fundamental than the official project of exclusion, resulting in more durable effects. The public project to disappear Arab Jerusalem is strongly supported by the intimate working of primary socialization, turning a difficult political conflict into an impossible one.

The passage of the marriage equality law in New York is a milestone. Changes in everyday practices preceded the event. With gays and lesbians in their diversity more visible, their exclusion from marriage (and the military) became harder to sustain. The way we lived suggested one legal framework. The way we live mandated another. The official public is catching up with private everyday practices.

And as the legal framework changes, so do everyday practice: thus, Americans have become accustomed to have access to public support of medical care in their old age. Even conservative Republicans, who initially denounced Medicare as the beginning of the end of freedom in America, now must maintain their support, as they are proposing fundamental changes to the program, which Democrats see as a dismantling. With this in mind, Gary Alan Fine expects such Republican support of Obamacare, in the long run.

President Obama is a reluctant supporter of gay marriage. While he applauded the passing of the New York law last week, he carefully didn’t openly endorse change in Federal policy. Republicans say they support Medicare, while they propose policies that may dismantle it. Even the casual observer can read between the lines. Obama’s opposition to gay marriage is insincere, as is Republican support of Medicare. Americans, further, may indeed be more prejudiced against blacks, less prejudiced against Mormons than the Gallop poll indicates. Personal conviction may contrast with public appearance and expression.

But note how important appearance and expression are. If a person is afraid to utter openly racist conviction, it is less likely that the person will be willing to engage in overt racist action. The hypocrisy constitutes a social control. When Obama publicly supports gay marriage, it will be a big deal (my guess before the next elections). It will help extend the normality of equality for those with various sexual orientations. While Republican direct attack on Medicare is unlikely (no matter how they feel about it), when they stop attacking Obama’s healthcare reform and start suggesting ways to improve it (perhaps still wanting to undermine Obamacare) it will also be a big deal. How one is hypocritical matters.

But please only two cheers. Sometimes hypocrisy deserves its bad reputation, as in the Strauss-Kahn affair. Charged with rape in New York, DSK is likely to get off here. He appears to be innocent, though he may not be, but in such a case appearance is enough. As we discussed in the replies to my report on Daniel Dayan’s reaction to the affair, Strauss-Kahn may even have a significant political life in France. Yet,  a can of worms was opened, and despite some valiant attempts to get those damn worms back in by the likes of Bernard-Henri Lévy, there are still important questions that arise from the case concerning the relationship between public appearance and private belief and actions. Lévy pretends that the private actions of Strauss-Kahn are not at issue and that the biggest scandal has been his  public humiliation. Yet, it is clear to me that the private life of public men sometimes should be examined. DSK stands accused of rape in another case, in France this time, not by a lowly chambermaid, but by a member of the French cultural-political elite. An official public appearance of innocence may or may not be supported by private witness. This is and should be a public issue. The public prerogatives of power should be subjected to critical examination. I hope they are not hidden by a resurgence of anti-Americanism in France, as has been reported by The New York Times. No cheers for xenophobia and chauvinism. Only two for hypocrisy. Because sometimes, it should be revealed, with consequences.

Aside from being human, one of the most interesting things that Mormons, Muslims, Atheists, Gays and Lesbians have in common is that a substantial number of voters are biased against voting for members of these socially constructed groups for President of the United States. A recent Gallup Poll and a journal article that is being published in Electoral Studies and discussed in Vanderbilt University’s “Research News” present data and analysis on this issue.

The Gallup Poll covering the period June 9-12, 2011, shows an unwillingness to vote for people with the following characteristics as President: Mormon, 22%; Gay or Lesbian, 32%; and Atheist, 49%.  These religions and sexual orientations have substantially higher negatives than other groups tested by Gallop: Hispanics, 10%; Jews, 9%; Baptists, 7%; Catholics, 7%; women, 6%; and Blacks, 5%. Obviously, people can belong to one or more classifications, but the meaning of the survey is clear.

Gallop points out that the bias against Mormons has remained consistently high over decades while there have been steep declines in other categories. Resistance to a Mormon President shows that the largest differences are among different educational groups: college graduates, 12%; some college, 20%; and no college, 31%. Significant differences on Mormons for President were not correlated with gender, age, or religion. Republicans and independents demonstrated less reluctance than Democrats. Those from the East showed less bias towards a Mormon candidate than those in other parts of the country, especially the Midwest. These findings may pose a hurdle for Republican Presidential primary candidates Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman.

The data and analysis presented in the Electoral Studies journal article by Brett V. Benson, Jennifer L. Merolla and John G. Geer, “Two Steps Forward and One Step Back? Bias in 2008 Presidential Election” makes a number of interesting observations concerning religious bias. The data came from two Internet-based experiments run by Polimetrix in November 2007 and October 2008. John Geer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt observed:

“Our data showed that the voters’ increased social contact with Mormons reduces bias among the general population. However, this does not seem to be the case for Southern Evangelicals since religious threat is particularly relevant for this group. In other words, social contact does not diminish bias when the religious conflict from a given group is salient in politics.”

This doesn’t mean that a Mormon can’t be elected President, but it does point out a hurdle that Romney and Huntsman would have to overcome if selected by their party.  The data showed even greater challenges atheists and Muslims in winning support from Southern Evangelicals.

Worldwide membership in the Mormon religion is approximately 14 million people. The Mormon Church has a website which provides easily accessible information about their faith for anyone who would like to understand their religion. Opposition by Southern Evangelicals to Mormons appears to me to be based more upon theological differences than conflicts on cultural values. These conflicts are difficult to resolve because they are based upon ideological beliefs rather than factual truths; and many of these beliefs are held by what Eric Hoffer termed true believers in his 1951 book on mass movements. In addition to true believers, the situation is compounded by what Herbert H. Hyman and Paul B. Sheatsley termed a hard core of “know nothings” in their classic 1947 study. The abstract for “Some Reasons Why Information Campaigns Fail” reads as follows:

“’Even if all the physical barriers to communication were known and removed,’ the authors contend, ‘there would remain many psychological barriers to the free flow of ideas.’ For example, interested people acquire more information than the uninterested; people seek the sort of facts which are congenial to their existing attitudes; different groups interpret the same information differently. This study is based on an analysis of national samples of the American people.”

In addition to “true believers” and “know-nothings,” it is equally difficult to correct flawed misinformation held by “know-somethings.”

For me, the terms “true believers” and a hard core of “know-nothings” capture important aspects of the why it so difficult to reduce bias. While increased social contact is important, other interventions are necessary which address representations, institutions, routinized social actions, the legitimation of them, and the processes by which they are passed on to others and internalized.